Properly Introduced

One full week in Charleston down for Jason and one half week for me and I'd say we've done pretty well at being properly introduced to the South. Friday night and Saturday we gave up our unpacking to go taste what Charleston has to offer. Thank you to all our friends that made that possible.

First of course I have to show you that we actually have a fully functioning kitchen! That was my project Friday while Jason was at work. I assembled the table, pot rack, and unpacked everything all before lunch. I felt pretty accomplished. 

Then I had some family friends that had rented a beach house on Kiawah Island that invited us to come have dinner with them for a night. They had all rented beach cruiser bikes so while dinner was cooking we took a ride down to the beach and it was beautiful! I can definitely get used to this. I thoroughly enjoyed the waves and the beautiful beach and Jason enjoyed finding the gigantic sea slugs and crabs. Welcome to the beach lifestyle.

On Saturday some friends from our ward took us to see a Southern Plantation. It was so beautiful! It reminded us of the gardens in Europe where we got engaged. And it's right down the road from where we live, we will definitely be buying a summer pass. After the gardens we went to a restaurant and had shrimp and grits and hushpuppies. Oh and lets not forget the best chocolate pudding I've ever had.

This is one of the oldest oak trees ever. It is so old and heavy that they have supports holding it up.

This is the front view from where the mansion used to stand. Unfortunately it was burned down by Union soldiers.

Going from North to South has been so interesting from a history perspective. In Boston all the history was just mixed right in with everything new. It was there but sometimes I felt you had to hunt for it. Also everything in Boston definitely has an American twist or just flat out American spirit. Here the history is emphasized in the city and the plantations were made to rival with their English family. Much more European than expected. Fascinating. Simply Fascinating. I think I'm being bitten by the history bug again....finally. Time to start on some good historical reading.

We made it to Charleston!

After one long car ride and a wonderful stop in D.C. we made it to Charleston! I know we only drove 16 hours to get here but I feel worlds away from Cambridge, MA. We are very excited to be here but we are really missing Cambridge which we felt like was finally home. Although we're excited to embrace the southern life down here in the South there are a few things in Cambridge that we will miss and I don't want to forget what life was like there. Here are a few key differences we have noticed.

1. Public Transportation: Charleston has NO public transportation. We are staying out in a suburb of Charleston while we find an apt and the first day Jason asks me how I feel and I say very ironically that I feel claustrophobic. Sure the houses are big and spaced out, etc but I don't feel like there's anywhere to go and certainly not anywhere to walk to which after being in a place where you hardly ever used your car and yet there were also places to go makes this seem very small.

2. Families, particularly kids ages 8-15: There are a good amount of families here with more than one or two children and there are actually kids between 8-15, who knew? It's totally catching me off guard. We were in a restauraunt yesterday and this guy walks up the stairs and behind him were trailing about 4 girls and I thought it was a soccer team or something. No, the wife came up the stairs last and I then noticed that all the girls were different ages, just a family. That will take some getting used to.

3. Pace of Life: Okay so everyone in Cambridge moved really fast and there were massive amounts of people always going places or doing things. Here everything is slowed down. Most of all the people talk really slow and it takes about twice the time to have a conversation. Along with this, everyone in Cambridge felt like they had something they invested themselves into whether it was school, church, work, escaping global poverty, etc. You don't get that sense here and we really miss that. I hope that's something we can continue.

4. Friendliness: So people in MA and people here are very friendly. However, the friendliness here totally throws me off. Random people will just have a conversation with you and say hi when you cross them on the street. One of the first lessons I learned in Cambridge was put your head down and just keep walking.

5. Welcome to Consumerville: It is amazingly easy to get to stores and fast food here! And they have about every store you could want. I thought that would be really nice for a change but this is actually one of the things I'm really sad about. In Cambridge it was really hard to get to stores so you usually figured out how to do without things because it was too much hassle to go to the store. Our fast food eating was pretty much nonexistent and grocery shopping, or any shopping for that matter felt like a huge accomplishment. Because of these things we lived on a lot less and spent our money towards going into the city to see something new or rather we became consumers of culture. I realize now that I prefer life that way. I'm afraid of buying too much here and forgetting that I can actually live on a lot less and still be very happy. Also where's the challenge? I'm sure I'll find it no worries (like bugs, snakes, humidity)

In short although I am very excited to be in Charleston I also really miss Cambridge and sometimes I'm really curious as to why we need to be out here. Anyway I'm sure I'll learn more on that later. Here are a couple pictures from our town home that we found which we are definitely warming up to and our excursion into downtown Charleston.

April Showers Bring May visitors

Now with work over and the giant decision of what to do next in process I finally have some time to blog about the wonderful people who visited us in May. We love visitors because it gives us a chance to see things we haven't yet. First my good friend Mackenzie from Joy school visited us. It was so great to have her stop by! Among other things we took the time to visit Plymouth rock which was cool. I actually had a decadent come on the Mayflower which was great. Here's a few pics from the weekend.

I'm lazy so I won't figure out how to rotate this pic but at Plymouth they actually had a statue of the same Indian as on BYU campus, crazy! Apparently there are a lot of famous Mormon sculptors.

This is what's left of the famed Plymouth rock that they supposedly all walked on. Pretty cool!

Of course we had to hit the amazing delicious homemade ice cream in Lexington. One of the many things I love about New England-they definitely do homemade ice cream right!

Isn't my friend Kenzie beautiful! She is so motivated and such a great example of loving life, it was such a joy to have her over and between her and Jason I felt very spoiled and well taken care of. Thanks Kenzie for coming!

Next bring on the Family! Jason's cousin Cole was the first to come out for graduation. He flew in before Memorial Day when we went hiking through the Berkshires on our "strenuous" hike. Cole was such a joy to have around, exploring everything with Jason, helping me out in the kitchen, sharing all these cool things he's learning about the gospel, what an amazing kid and so easy to have around. He leaves on his mission this week.

And finally we got to enjoy the whole family! Jason's mom flew in right before graduation. That day happened to be a rainy New England day so what better thing to do than go to Maine?  

Each of Jason's siblings told his mom to do something while she was in town so one thing was see a lighthouse...check! We also hit a quilting store where she got a quilt, threw a rock in the ocean and enjoyed more homemade ice cream and delicious burgers.

Then it was my family's turn to come and join us. We took everyone on the freedom trail on a very hot and humid Friday. Then on Saturday we just took my parents to the Boston Harbor Islands and Concord. It was awesome!

Us all waiting at the gift stores while moms shop. Typical.

Everyone at the USS Constitution

We had to see the duck statue before we left, I'm so glad we did! Jason's mom also loved it.

Always have to hit the Republican/Democrat sculpture thing. 

Isaac insisted on walking on the red line.  

Dad eating Mike's Pastry. It's a must on the Freedom Trail. 

And this would be us on George's Island with an old civil war fort.

And this would be me looking awesome. There's almost nothing that feels so powerful as standing at the helm of a boat feeling the wind in your face. Definitely owning a yacht one day just to feel powerful.

And we finally made it to Trinity Church. It pales in comparison with Rome Cathedrals but in American, wow!

And finally this would be my mom and I at the site of the battle of Concord and Lexington. Isn't my mom so classy?

And I think that about wraps it up for May!

June

Last week our future looked like this...

(a black hole)

And now it looks like this...!

Hello Charleston, South Carolina!

Jason accepted a job on Monday to work with Google on a two year fellowship near Charleston, South Carolina. It's really about 30 minutes outside Charleston but hey. We are so excited! They need him down there in a little over two weeks which means we are leaving Boston next week :( Then we get to jump in the madness of finding housing and flying to Utah to get our stuff that's still out there. Talk about going somewhere completely opposite from Cambridge, MA. First of all it's a confederate state and the first state that left the Union which is kind of the exact opposite of here. I'm a history nerd so I pay attention to that kind of stuff. We're excited though to experience the southern hospitality and southern plantations and beaches. Apparently it's easy driving there and a lot more small town but still quaint and historic. We sure will miss walking to work and all the quirks in Cambridge though. We are so excited for the adventure, South Carolina here we come!

Graduation!

Jason officially graduated Harvard! I'm so proud of him. It was much more exciting than my graduation. First we got to go to the mega graduation where they conferred the degrees for all the graduating students. I woke up at 5a to go to the Harvard yard where it was to be held and still got a seat In the back where I couldn't see anything and was in the hot sun. It till was totally worth it. When they presented his school of education for the masters degree I was so happy for him and us! Other graduation festivities included watching him walk and get his degree and hearing Oprah speak which was awesome. We then ordered pizza and had all family over to come celebrate, it was the perfect day.

Memorial Day

Graduation week is here! I can't believe it's already done, but more for that on a later post. With all of the finals and job searching Monday was our first day that we could actually enjoy the fact that he finished school. Jason was dead set on hiking the Birkshire's out in western Mass and so that's exactly what we did. It was very different than a Utah hike. We drove 2 1/2 hours to get to the "mountain" and then in a mile and a half we were at the top and could oversee the whole valley. The hike itself was categorized as strenuous and it definitely got your blood pumping and heart racing if you took the difficult trail but it was a somewhat baby hike for Utah. However it was perfect because we got to the top in little time and had a beautiful view, definitely my kind of hike. It was so wonderful to be out in nature again! I didn't even realize that I had missed it. To top it off when we were driving home we stopped at two of the most beautiful grocery stores I've seen in MA. The first had a whole aisle of gluten free foods right when you walked in, hello happiness! (I've gone gluten free for the past month or so. more on that later) And then Wegman's which is kind of like Harmon's. Too bad we might be moving soon so I didn't get too much.

Kennebunkport

This weekend some friends that we have invited us and a few other couples to go up to Kennebunkport, ME. We all felt like we finally had a weekend that actually felt like a weekend. This was absolutely wonderful for Jason because Jason just finished finals this week (yay!!!!!) and he got back from a trip on Thursday so we needed something to do to celebrate as well as prepare ourselves for life decisions we have to make coming up. Highlights of the trip were sleeping in, playing on the beach, taking a nap, reading in a hammock and excellent conversation. One conversation I was asked if I could transmit three thoughts to the general population what would it be? Well my thoughts are 1. Family is the most important thing we can have in this life; 2.Listen to the stories that we tell ourselves because they make up who we are today. That includes family history, personal history, national history, etc. and 3. Pick your battles. It made for most interesting conversation to hear what everyone would tell the world if they had the chance. What would your three things be?

Sebastion and Michelle. Our excellent gourmet cooks

Alexis and Shay

Tom and Jenny, the excellent couple who put it all together